Define Your Agent Network Specification

After you create your agent network project, configure agent-network.yaml and exchange.json to reflect the structure of your network.

Before You Begin

Make sure you review the prerequisites.

To help you identify agents that are also brokers on the Anypoint Code Builder canvas, consider appending "Broker" to the end of the name, for example employee-onboarding-broker.

Define a Network Using MuleSoft Vibes

MuleSoft Vibes can help you configure your agent network specification. For more information, see Creating API Specs with MuleSoft Vibes.

In the Anypoint Code Builder activity bar, click the agent icon .
Give the agent information about your agent network, including the brokers, agents, MCP servers, and LLMs you want to connect.

To get started, try one of these suggested messages.

Help me build an agent network configuration for my Employee Onboarding project.
Revise my Employee Onboarding agent network project. Use OpenAI for the LLM.
Add a new broker for employee offboarding to my HR agent network.
Add a new skill to Offboarding broker.

Define a Network Using Anypoint Code Builder or IDE

If you don’t want to use MuleSoft Vibes, use Anypoint Code Builder or your IDE to edit the agent-network.yaml and exchange.json files and define your agent network and authentication.

To understand sections of the project files and expected values, see Agent Network Project File Reference. The agent-network.yaml file can contain definitions for one or more brokers.

If your agent network references Anypoint Exchange assets, you need to use the asset IDs in exchange.json to add references in the agent-network.yaml file. For more information, see Add Exchange Assets to Your Agent Network Project.

Use auto-completion menus in Anypoint Code Builder to speed your development. For more information, see Use Auto-Completion Menus.

Add Exchange Assets to Your Agent Network Project

If you have existing Exchange assets to use in your agent network, add them to the dependencies attribute in exchange.json in your project. After you add assets, edit the agent-network.yaml file to indicate which brokers use those assets. This applies to both assets your own business group owns and public assets from a different business group.

For a complete example, see Example: Reference an Exchange Asset from Your Agent Network.

Add Assets Using MuleSoft Vibes

In the Anypoint Code Builder activity bar, click the agent icon .
Tell the agent that you want to add Exchange assets to your project. MuleSoft Vibes does the rest.

To get started, try one of these suggested messages.

Add tools for background check processing in my Employee Onboarding project.
Add a Talent Pool MCP server to my Employee Onboarding agent network project.

Add Assets Using Anypoint Code Builder

To reference existing Exchange assets in your agent network project, follow these steps. This procedure applies whether the asset belongs to your own business group or to a different business group (for example, a public Exchange asset).

If you’re not logged in already, log in to your Anypoint Platform account.
In your Anypoint Code Builder project, choose one of the following:
- In Explorer, right-click a project file and select Add Exchange Assets to Agent Network Project.
- In the Command Palette, run this command: MuleSoft: Add Agent Network Assets to Agent Network Project.
In Add Exchange Assets to Project, enter information about the assets to add.
Select Add to Project.

Assets are added to the dependencies attribute in the exchange.json file in your project.
Edit the agent-network.yaml file to indicate which brokers use those assets:
1. Add a connection entry for each asset in the context.connections section. Set kind to match the asset type (a2a, mcp, or llm), and set ref.name to the asset’s assetId from exchange.json.
2. Reference the connection from one or more brokers (for example, from a broker’s llm, links, or tools section).
3. If the asset belongs to a different business group than your agent network, specify the namespace property at the same level as name. Provide the groupId (business group ID) for the business group that the dependency belongs to. The groupId value is the same as the groupId value of the corresponding dependency in exchange.json. If you don’t provide a namespace value, the same groupId as the agent network project is used.

After you add dependencies, they’re available as values in auto-completion menus in Anypoint Code Builder. For example, after you add test-agent to exchange.json, the value test-agent is available in auto-completion menus in the code editor in agent-network.yaml when you reference an agent.

Example: Reference an Exchange Asset from Your Agent Network

This example shows a complete exchange.json and agent-network.yaml for a project that consumes an A2A agent (helpCenterAgentTestV3) from Anypoint Exchange. The same pattern applies to MCP servers and LLMs: change the connection kind to mcp or llm, and adjust the dependencies classifier in exchange.json accordingly.

In exchange.json, the asset is listed in the dependencies array. The groupId value identifies the business group that owns the asset. If the asset belongs to a different business group than your project, use that asset’s groupId in the connection’s namespace value in agent-network.yaml.

{
  "main": "agent-network.yaml",
  "name": "brokerV2-template",
  "classifier": "agentic-network",
  "organizationId": "b4c12f0a-c376-4561-878c-f4f0540c5407",
  "descriptorVersion": "1.0.0",
  "tags": [],
  "metadata": {
    "variables": {
      "myAgent": {
        "url": {
          "description": "My External Agent URL",
          "default": "",
          "secret": false
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "dependencies": [
    {
      "classifier": "agent-metadata",
      "packaging": "zip",
      "groupId": "b4c12f0a-c376-4561-878c-f4f0540c5407",
      "assetId": "helpCenterAgentTestV3",
      "version": "1.0.2"
    }
  ],
  "groupId": "b4c12f0a-c376-4561-878c-f4f0540c5407",
  "assetId": "brokerv2-template",
  "version": "1.0.0"
}

In agent-network.yaml, the asset is declared as a connection in context.connections. The connection kind matches the asset type (a2a for an agent, mcp for an MCP server, or llm for an LLM), and ref.name matches the assetId from exchange.json. The ref.namespace value matches the asset’s groupId. URL and credential values are typically supplied through variables defined in exchange.json. After defining the connection, brokers reference it by name from their llm, links, or tools sections.

agentNetwork: 2.0.0
info:
    label: brokerV2-template
    version: v1
registry: {}
context:
    connections:
        helpCenterAgentTestV3:
            kind: a2a
            ref:
                name: helpCenterAgentTestV3
                namespace: b4c12f0a-c376-4561-878c-f4f0540c5407
            url: ${myAgent.url}
brokers:
    broker1:
        kind: AgentScript
        implementation: ./brokers/broker1.agent
        interfaces:
            a2a:
                card:
                    name: Broker 1
                    description: Describe what your broker does.
                    url: http://localhost:8081/broker1
                    version: 1.0.0
                    protocolVersion: 0.3.0
                    capabilities:
                        streaming: true
                        pushNotifications: false
                    defaultInputModes:
                        - text/plain
                    defaultOutputModes:
                        - text/plain
                    skills:
                        - id: my-skill
                          name: My Skill
                          description: Describe what this skill does.
                          tags:
                              - general

Because the connection in this example uses an explicit namespace, this same configuration works whether the asset belongs to the project’s business group or to a different one (such as a public Exchange asset). To consume a public asset, copy the asset’s groupId from Anypoint Exchange into both the dependencies entry in exchange.json and the connection’s namespace value in agent-network.yaml.